Sinners Atone (Sinners Anonymous, #4)

My father had rules.

Mostly bullshit, hammered together from age-old clichés and Hollywood one-liners, but when he spoke them into existence, they had a nasty habit of hardening into prophecies.

I was born bad simply because he said I would be. He claimed I'd withhold my first breath out of spite, and that not even shoving the family silver into my mouth before I took my second would pacify me.

Now, I'll take my last breath exactly where he said I would: in the dark that made me The Villain.

My laugh echoes through the forest, deep and bitter, before morphing into a spluttering cough.

Guess death isn't so funny after all.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and scan the black sky.

I learned the first time I died that the long tunnels and the white lights weren't meant for men like me.

Hell, after everything I've done, God is more likely to cut the power and draw the curtains than signpost me to heaven.

I'm looking for a different light. An orange one. When I spot it filtering through the branches, I bite out a curse.

It isn't getting any fucking closer.

I press my palm against the gash in my side and glare up at it. I'm dying, but I'm not delusional. There's no miracle waiting for me at that streetlamp, but if I reach it, I'm on the main road. Then all I have to do is cross over and I'm at the church. It's my only chance to warn my brothers.

My brothers.

Fuck.

A new kind of pain behind my sternum drives me onward, but as my boot strikes the soil, white-hot heat roars up my leg and explodes in my stomach. I stagger backward and clip something with my heel. When a whirring noise prickles my ears, my muscles tighten.

I've tripped over that fucking "play" button.

I knew it was coming because it always comes. It's a myth that the worst part about dying is the pain or the uncertainty of what comes next. It's not. It's the part where your life flashes before your eyes and there's fuck-all you can do about it.

I tried outrunning it once; it only chased me. Tried closing my eyes, but it just projected off the inside of my eyelids.

Knowing I can't spare the energy fighting it, I clench my jaw, steady myself against a tree, and reluctantly wait for the show to start.

The Beginning plays out in Technicolor.

Nine summers spill out from between the trees and swallow the darkness whole. Days roll out along the forest floor; long and lazy, grass-stained and sunburned. Even the October wind warms and thickens, bringing with it the smell of chlorine and that sunblock I hated so much.

A memory of Angelo putting me in a headlock and smothering my face with it dances against the trunk of an oak tree. On another, my mother pretends not to notice while she flips through a magazine by the pool.

Amusement rattles my next exhale, and I rub my thumb over a mud-caked knuckle. The first scar I ever got was from the day I was strong enough to twist out of my brother's grip and sucker punch him in the nuts.

Then the days fade to terracotta. Summer nights never got dark in The Beginning. They were always lit by bonfires in the garden and the torch I'd tuck under my chin to tell my brothers ghost stories around them.

Rafe's shrieks rustle between the branches, and a cold snap brushes my cheek as Angelo's laugh chases after it. He was vicious long before it solidified into a nickname.

When the next sound echoes in my ears, my smirk fades. All the fresh blood in my mouth congeals and threatens to choke me.

"Gabriel."

Fuck. I'd be an idiot to close my eyes. Being this close to death means there's a good chance they won't open again. But when my mama's voice shoots through the night and pierces my chest like a second stab wound, I squeeze my lids shut and drop my head back against the tree.

Maria Visconti was a woman with many hobbies, but her favorite was believing in bullshit.

She believed some chick named Eve ate an apple and caused all the evil in the world, but if she'd just wished on a stray eyelash, everything would have been okay anyway.

Every shiver was someone walking over her grave, and every black cat that crossed her path was a sure sign she'd soon be lowered into it.

The bearded dude in the sky, the fortune teller at the fair.

Even the smackhead who hangs outside the Visconti Grand Casino and swaps tourists a lucky penny for a dollar.

She believed everything everyone told her to.

Except her husband and his rules.

"Gabriel!"

I grit my teeth and turn away from her voice.

No doubt she'd have believed him at first, back when he was telling her all the shit every mother wanted to hear.

That her first child would be born to lead, and her second would take the silver spoon in his mouth and turn it to gold.

But when he placed his hand on her swollen belly and declared her third son the Devil, she'd soured into a skeptic.

"Gabriel …"

I press harder onto my bleeding stomach, letting out an acidic hiss. I was wrong. The worst part of dying isn't watching your life flash before your eyes; it's hearing it ring in your ears. And tonight, not even the sound of sins could drown it out.

A guttural wheeze shoots from my lips, melts into a bleach-white puff, and blows all nine summers out of the clearing.

Nine winters bring silence and a blanket of snow.

My retinas burn from the sudden contrast, and I look to the gray fog hanging beneath the forest canopy to escape it.

But there's no relief up there, just a familiar face, a familiar expression, and a familiar fucking smirk disappearing behind the faceted crystal of a whiskey glass.

A new voice sears the back of my neck.

"I told you so, Maria."

And then comes the familiar fury.

Alonso Visconti was so certain I'd be bad, so certain of his prophecy that he'd refused to name me after an angel like my brothers. Something about blasphemy and poor taste. But my mama had a way of making spite look pretty, and named me after her favorite angel of all.

"Oh, Gabriel."

The bastard was right from the jump. While my brothers gurgled, laughed, and crawled, I bit, hissed, kicked. One of my earliest memories is stabbing a cousin with a butter knife at Sunday lunch, and I can't even remember which one because I've tried to kill them all at some point.

I slam my head against the tree, trying to shake my mother's voice out of it.

But it's too late; it's already crawled into my brain and made itself at home.

"Gabriel" plays on a loop over and over and over.

All three fucking syllables because she only ever said my full name, and never with a hint of irony.

If anyone, including myself, dropped the last two, she'd tut, pick them up, and stitch them back on.

I don't know if she said my name the way she did to try to convince God I was good or just to piss off my father. If the latter was the case, it worked.

For the first nine years, he called me nothing at all.

From the tenth on, he called me The Villain.

My lungs seize, and my next inhale is desperate and wet. When I throw my head back to gulp more air, the darkness eats at the edges of my vision. Right on cue, it swallows all nine winters, all the half-drunk hot cocoas, and the half-built snowmen with wonky carrots for dicks.

When The Beginning ends, the darkness will take everything.

The last pinprick of light swims before my eyes, then disappears, plunging me into the black abyss. Silence doesn't follow; it's just bittersweet memories yelled through a megaphone, and when I can no longer stand it, a roar of frustration lights a path of fire up my throat.

I slide a few inches down rough bark, panting.

My stomach slides south too, and my gaze reluctantly follows.

There's that glow from the streetlamp again, only it's not. It's too small and too low, dancing against the dark at chest height. I give my head a shake, squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them, the light has fractured and sharpened, taking the shape of fire.

Birthday candles. Ten, striped blue and white.

They flicker in the wind, pushing the darkness from my vision until all I can see is light. They slow my heartbeat, steady my breathing, and for a moment, life isn't leaking out of me from the six-inch gash in my stomach.

The last time I cheated Death, I swore when it found me again and flashed this part before me, I wouldn't hold my breath. Said it the time before that too. Yet here I am, my inhale locked at the base of my throat as if I'm saving it for later.

The backs of my eyes sting. Guess dying makes you a sentimental pussy. It's got me wondering about stupid shit, like alternate realities and butterfly wings and what would have happened if I'd been the first or second child. If I hadn't been born at all.

Seconds pile up into minutes, and I'm still holding my breath, chest convulsing, lungs burning, doing it anyway.

The flames turn a darker shade of orange, pulsing in and out of focus.

My lips tingle and my head spins. Instinct rises, and before I can squash it, blood and breath splutter from my lips, snuffing out the candles.

Darkness engulfs the forest again. I wipe my mouth and glare out at it. It glares right back and whispers, What did you expect?

I huff out a weak laugh. Yeah. Mama could have said all three syllables until she was blue in the face, it would never have made a difference because my father had sealed my fate.

I was born bad, and I'll die in the dark that made me the worst.

Fuck this.

I don't have time for end-of-life hallucinations. I've got shit to do.

I shove myself off the tree, my boots sinking farther into the soil with every step. The Devil's grasping at my ankles, trying to drag me home, but he can't have me, not yet. Not until I've knelt on the concrete steps of the church and carved my message into its doors.

The Middle starts with a honk of a horn.

That bastard noise.